Caprese with bresaola

Even though I had all the ingredients for this--against all odds--it never occurred to me to make this until I had most of the stuff out on the counter for a completely different purpose.

Normally, I never have out-of-season tomatoes around. But yesterday, after a brief Costco run (where I procured both the bresaola and mozzarella, in addition to eggs and milk and cream and other unsexy things), I ran by the little produce shop near my apartment building. You know, the one where I got 6 peppers for $1? I got six peppers for $1, again, plus a bag of six soft tomatoes for $1, plus a bunch of other stuff (leeks, mustard greens, beets, apples, garlic, parsley, cilantro, and basil).

The tomatoes aren't great--they're soft and virtually tasteless, since they're out-of-season. I got them for a curry, and then realized, hey! I have tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil! I can make caprese salad for dinner! And then, hey! I also have bresaola! I'll throw that into the mix!

Bresaola is dried cured beef, sliced thin. Prosciutto would work well, too.

Stack in this order: tomato slice, piece of bresaola, mozzarella slice, large basil leaf. Drizzle good olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the top, and add a bit of good salt and pepper.

Like I said, the tomatoes weren't great. But everything else was delicious.

Kale caesar salad with steak

This kale caesar salad, plus grilled steak = steak caesar salad. Steak and kale caesar salad. However you want to phrase it, it's yummy. It made an awesome lunch today.

Brisket

Brisket, for those that don't know, is one of the famous barbecue cuts of beef. It sits on the cow's chest; and because cows don't have collarbones, that cut supports about 60% of the cow's weight. Which is why brisket is full of fat and connective tissues, and needs to be cooked low and slow for a long time in order to render it delicious. (Which is why it's great for barbecue.)

When it's cooked properly, it's meltingly delicious. I had the good fortune to get some leftover (cooked) brisket from my restaurant this week. Even a day old and reheated in the microwave, it was amazing. I made a mushroom risotto with some of the mushrooms I got, too, and served it with some brisket pieces on top.

I've never actually cooked brisket myself (just eaten it), but I can say it's definitely worth it. I can also it goes smashingly with mushroom risotto.

Beef broth from marrow bones

My parents are visiting this weekend, and to celebrate, I took them out to dinner at my restaurant Friday night. We got burgers, duck fat-roasted fiddlehead ferns, and bone marrow. It was all delicious; there were plenty of leftovers, as those are filling burgers, so we all took doggie bags home.

I also brought home the cleaned-out marrow bones, to use for broth. Three big marrow bones, plus assorted vegetable scrap, plus a little salt, plus water. I let it simmer on low all day, and was rewarded with a deep, rich broth, the color of French onion soup. And man, the house smelled good.

I'll freeze that broth and use it for soups and the like. Close to a gallon of beef broth, for the cost of just taking the bones home.

Short ribs

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I don't eat a lot of "centerpiece" meat. By that I mean I keep costs down by using meat as a flavoring rather than as an entree. My shopping list usually consists of bacon and various kinds of sausage, with the occasional whole chicken or fish; very rarely does red meat show up. (Not because I have anything against red meat, just that it's expensive.)

But Sam's Club was running a half-off special on short ribs the other day, so I picked some up. Short ribs are the ends of the ribs; there's a lot of fat and connective tissue, so the best way to cook them is low and slow, to allow the fat and tissue to break down. Then you get incredibly rich, moist beef. (Which, frankly, is tastier than most steak, since most steak lacks decent marbling.)

3 lbs short ribs
1 onion, chopped
1 cup each carrots and celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 cups broth
2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350. Start by heating some bacon fat or olive oil in a Dutch oven, and sear the short ribs on all sides. Remove from the pan and add the onion, carrots, celery, garlic and shallot. Cook until tender; add the bay leaves, broth and seasonings, and add the short ribs back in. Cover and cook at 350 degrees for 2 hours.

For an added layer of flavor, once the ribs are done braising, remove them from the Dutch oven and place on a roasting rack. Increase the oven to 450, and roast the ribs for 10 minutes or so, to give them a nice sear on the outside.

The liquids can be reduced down to make a yummy sauce for potatoes.

Grilled steak (or, Belated Birthday Dinner)

My belated birthday dinner consisted of grilled dry-aged steak, fried potatoes, and creamed spinach, capped off with the last bottle of Laughing Stock. There was also a sort-of bearnaise sauce, but it didn't come together the way I wanted it to, so we'll leave that out.

The steaks were dry-aged beef. I'll leave out the science of why dry aging beef makes it taste better (it does; you can Google it for more info), but these were tasty steaks. I brought them up to room temperature, seared them on my indoor grill for two minutes per side, and then let them rest.

The potatoes were fried in truffle oil and duck fat.

It was a true Peter Luger-style dinner, in my very own living room.

Beef stew with sweet potatoes and green beans

I made this for my parents when they were in town. My dad is a notoriously picky eater, and even he loved this.

It's essentially the same recipe as Beef Stew with Butternut Squash, only with sweet potatoes. I roasted, peeled and chopped the sweet potatoes before adding them. Also, I left out the onions (my mom is allergic) and threw in an entire head of garlic instead. At the last minute, I added two or three big handfuls of frozen green beans.

Beef and butternut squash stew

1 chopped onion
a few minced cloves of garlic
olive oil/bacon fat
1-2 lbs stew beef
a handful of chopped sundried tomatoes
1 roasted butternut squash
rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper
1 cup port
beef or chicken broth

Heat the few tablespoons olive oil or bacon fat, and saute the onion and garlic until soft. Add the rosemary and thyme. Add the beef, and cook until browned on the edges (maybe five minutes). Deglaze with the port. (Red wine would work well, too.) Add the already-roasted butternut squash, diced into big pieces, and the sundried tomatoes. Add enough broth to float the whole thing. Cook down, covered, for about an hour. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This is a great winter stew. Last time I made it, the butternut squash essentially fell apart after roasting. I threw all the mush into the stew pot, and instead of chunks of beef and squash, I got chunks of beef. The squash virtually disappeared into the sauce, but it gave the whole thing a really divine sweetness.

Also, check out these other butternut squash recipes on Foodista!

Butternut Squash

Beef and barley stew

Yep, it's that time of year here in Massachusetts. Had to wear my hat and gloves this morning!

Get some olive oil in a Dutch oven going, and sear 1 lb of beef stew meat (not cooked all the way through, just browned on both sides). Remove that, add some more olive oil, and add to that:

1 small onion, chopped
2-3 chopped carrots, and stalks of celery
1-2 chopped bell peppers
a few cloves of garlic, minced

When the veggies are soft, deglaze with a little red wine. Add two cups of pearled barley (I didn't have that much, so I threw in a handful of quinoa as well), two cans of tomatoes, and enough beef broth to float the whole thing. Add the beef back in. Season with:

cumin, cayenne, paprika, chili powder, dried chili flakes,

Let that all cook down on medium-low until the barley is done. Salt and pepper to taste.

You can substitute in other grains (like quinoa) or potatoes. Or sweet potatoes. Or other root vegetables (parsnips, etc.).

Sloppy joes

A childhood classic. Great for cold winter nights.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ¼ lbs ground beef (though I've also used a combination of ground beef and ground pork)
¼ cup brown sugar
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 cups tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Rolls/hamburger buns

Heat oil in skillet, add meat. Break it up, add brown sugar and steak seasoning (barbecue dry rub is also lovely) if you have any. When meat has browned, add onion and pepper with vinegar and Worcestershire, cook 5 minutes over medium heat. Add tomato sauce and paste. Stir to combine. Reduce heat, cook 5 minutes. Serve on toasty buns.

A dinner to celebrate

To celebrate our engagement, I whipped up a romantic dinner for two: grass-fed flank steak, glazed carrots, and potatoes fried in duck fat and truffle oil. With a bottle of '99 Heitz Zinfandel. Not a cheap dinner by any stretch of the imagination--but I put it together for a third of what we would have paid in a restaurant, and we got to eat it in our pajamas.

After a particularly gruesome duel bout of food poisoning caused by cheap ground beef, I've vowed never again to eat cheap ground beef. Meaning: I don't know where it comes from. Most ground beef is cobbled together from different animals, sometimes even different factories. Add to that the fact that most beef is soaked in bleach--yes, bleach--to kill the germs, and that still doesn't kill them all. So I've switched to grass-fed beef. True grass-fed beef (meaning it was raised entirely on grass, not just during its last days--that's "grass-finished beef") has two-thirds less saturated fat than corn-fed beef and 85% less E. coli. Plus it tastes a whole lot better. It's leaner, juicier, and actually tastes like beef should. The downside is that it's expensive--the one flank steak cost me $22. But you know what? I'd rather eat that beef once in a while than the cheap crap all the time.

The other benefit is that you don't need to do anything to it. Just bring it up to room temperature, broil it a couple of minutes on each side, let sit about 15 minutes, and serve. That's it. I put a little salt on it, but you don' t need sauce or seasonings or even a grill. Slice along the grain and serve. The taste speaks for itself.

The glazed carrots were super easy--I peeled them, then started a sauce of a couple tablespoons of butter, Grand Marnier and beef broth with a pinch of sugar. I added the carrots and let everything cook down until the sauce was a nice syrupy glaze. The potatoes are the best potatoes ever. Slice and boil for a minute, then finish by frying in duck fat and truffle oil. Serve with a good salt. We drank martinis while we cooked, then popped open the good wine for dinner.

Granted, even with the flank steak being $22, the whole meal cost less than $25. Duck fat and truffle oil are a little expensive at first, but they last a while. You don't need much for the potatoes. Bacon fat would work, too, if you can't find duck fat. The wine was a different story, that shot the total cost of the meal into triple digits. But hey--what's the point of having good wine if you don't drink it?